Jakarta functions as both a refuge and a place where safety depends on whose authority governs it. Under Uncle Bunny’s influence, Ajo Kawir is offered protection from the Tiger’s men through imprisonment, while the city’s wider history connects martial training and criminal patronage to the aftermath of civil conflict.

Refuge Under Uncle Bunny

After killing the Tiger, Ajo Kawir tells Uncle Bunny that he is leaving and that the Tiger’s men can take his life. Uncle Bunny refuses to accept that choice: Ajo came to Jakarta to stay alive, and Uncle Bunny will not let him leave to die in the street. His insistence makes the city a temporary sanctuary, though not a place where Ajo can simply resume an ordinary life.

Uncle Bunny proposes surrendering to the police as a way out of hiding. He believes he can arrange a prison term of about ten years rather than decades, and argues that his men inside the jails can protect Ajo. Imprisonment is presented as safer than the streets: the Tiger’s followers will stop hunting Ajo once they know he is incarcerated, and some people around the Tiger had themselves wanted him dead. Jakarta’s protection therefore works through a compromise with the institutions that might otherwise threaten Ajo.

A City Shaped by Political Aftermath

The account of the Kalimasada Silat Academy places Jakarta’s social world against the history of the twelve-year civil war between the republican army and Islamic rebels. The academy, near a public hospital, was founded by Kyai Abdul Kadir, a veteran commander whose forces had operated along Java’s southern coast. After the rebel leader R. M. Kartosuwirjo was captured and the militias’ morale collapsed, guerrilla commanders surrendered; some were executed, while others were imprisoned and later pardoned.

For many former fighters, release did not mean a stable return to civilian life. Without work or housing, some became robbers, thieves, or petty extortionists, while soldiers who had once captured them sometimes provided armed protection. That uneasy relationship joined state power to criminal activity: former guerrillas could be used as manpower to maintain order or disrupt it, and discarded when they were no longer useful.

The Academy’s Changing Purpose

Kyai Abdul Kadir founded Kalimasada to gather former guerrillas and offer more than combat instruction. He sought to rehabilitate men who had often joined the insurgency as children, teaching religious wisdom and practical skills such as sewing, cultivating land, and managing loans for small businesses. The academy was meant to provide a livelihood as well as a way away from the guerrilla life.

Only a few former fighters joined. The others made their own arrangements with soldiers, a path that left them vulnerable when their usefulness ended. Kyai Abdul Kadir foresaw their danger, but died of old age before soldiers turned against and exterminated the ex-guerrillas. After his son took over, religious classes ended and the practical livelihood training disappeared. The academy became a conventional martial-arts school, attracting students who wanted to fight effectively and discover what courage felt like.

A Place of Protection and Exposure

The evidence gives Jakarta two connected roles: it is Uncle Bunny’s base of protection for a man pursued by the Tiger’s men, and part of a social order built from political violence, armed patronage, and insecure livelihoods. The city’s refuge is conditional, as Ajo’s proposed safety depends on surrender and Uncle Bunny’s influence within the prison system.

The academy’s history provides a parallel account of conditional protection. Soldiers can shield former fighters when they need them and abandon them when they do not; Uncle Bunny, by contrast, tries to use his influence to keep Ajo alive. Together, these accounts make safety in Jakarta less a matter of escape from violence than of finding a powerful intermediary able to redirect it.